t is clear that Jackson's claim to equal share
with Morton in the discovery was unwarranted, not to say absurd.

Dr. Long's association with the matter was far different and altogether
honorable. By one of those coincidences so common in the history
of discovery, he was experimenting with ether as a pain-destroyer
simultaneously with Morton, though neither so much as knew of the
existence of the other. While a medical student he had once inhaled
ether for the intoxicant effects, as other medical students were wont to
do, and when partially under influence of the drug he had noticed that a
chance blow to his shins was painless. This gave him the idea that ether
might be used in surgical operations; and in subsequent years, in the
course of his practice in a small Georgia town, he put the idea into
successful execution. There appears to be no doubt whatever that he
performed successful minor operations under ether some two or three
years before Morton's final demonstration; hence that the merit of first
using the drug, or indeed any drug, in this way belongs to him. But,
unfortunately, Dr. Long did not quite trust the evidence of his own
experiments. Just at that time the medical journals were full of
accounts of experiments in which painless operations were said to be
performed through practice of hypnotism, and Dr. Long feared that his
own success might be due to an incidental hypnotic influence rather than
to the drug. Hence he delayed announcing his apparent discovery until
he should have opportunity for further tests--and opportunities did not
come every day to the country practitioner. And while he waited, Morton
anticipated him, and the discovery was made known to the world without
his aid. It was a true scientific caution that actuated Dr. Long to this
delay, but the caution cost him the credit, which might otherwise have
been his, of giving to the world one of the greatest blessings--dare we
not, perhaps, say the very greatest?--that science has ever conferred
upon humanity.

A few months after the use of ether became general, the Scotch surgeon
Sir J. Y. Simpson(6) discovered that another drug, chloroform, could be
administered with similar effects; that it would, indeed, in many cases
produce anaesthesia more advantageously even than ether. From that day
till this surgeons have been more or less divided in opinion as to
the relative merits of the two drugs; but this fact, of course, has no
bearing whatever upo